Aphasia in a composer

Abstract An outstanding composer, who developed a marked auditory aphasia after a vascular lesion in the temporal and temporo-parietal regions of the left hemisphere, preserved his musical abilities and continued his creative work as a composer, and — while still aphasic — composed a number of outstanding musical compositions which received the highest appreciation. This case proves that phonematic and musical (prosodic) organization of acoustic perception and memory are included in different systems, and have as their basis different cortical structures. It will be the task of further investigations to analyse the physiological mechanisms of these data.